Book Blogging: Expectations vs Reality

Good morning my dears! I have a little bit of a story for you. The other day I was scrolling through my WordPress feed, tripped, and fell into the rabbit hole that is Marie’s blogging corner on Drizzle & Hurricane Books (hello, #1 stan here at your service). One of the posts that I read was about her blogging expectations vs reality, and this got me thinking about what mine were and how things have changed.

Believe it or not, I’ve had this blog for three years (but haven’t done so well with updating it regularly), and I’ll tell you one thing: when I finally decided to situate myself in my own little corner of the internet (on a whim no less), I thought it’d be a piece of cake. I’d seen the movies and TV shows where they sat in their bedroom (check) with their sticker-covered laptops (check), furiously typing away for all to read (kinda check?). They made it look so easy, but after stalking/reading other blog posts and actually doing some blogging myself, I realized that my little brain had been oh so wrong.

Wrong about what, you ask? I just so happened to write it down for you. 😉 Also, I tried throwing in some gifs to jazz up the post a bit, what do you think?

Expectation: Book blogging is quick and easy.

Reality: Pfffffffft. It’s not. In movies, they make it look like you can just sit down, type out a post, and publish it. 😂😂😂 Yeah…not so much. I mean, you could 100% do that, but a put together and well-thought-out blog post takes a little longer. If you’ve read any of my Wanderlust Wednesday posts (which you should if you haven’t), it took me ages to write those because I had to do research, find pictures, write the posts, and fight with formatting (I don’t want to talk about it or how much I dislike the “blocks” on WordPress).

PLUS (sorry for the shouty letters), there’s the whole finding-things-to-blog-about aspect of it. Book bloggers just blog about books, right? You’re right about the content, but the context in which we actually talk about the books changes. I feel like there’s an unspoken pressure (or maybe not unspoken, because I’ve read posts about it lol) to keep our posts as fresh and original as we can, while still keeping it fun. The thing is though…I feel weird talking about anything on my book blog aside from books. Ari wrote an interesting post about originality amongst bloggers.

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Expectation: I’m too new to blogging to receive ARCs.

Reality: WRONG, wrong, and oh yeah, wrong. I made such a rookie mistake when I first discovered NetGalley and went crazy requesting ARCs. I thought that I’d get approved for a couple (or at least I hoped), so I happily clicked away oblivious to the reality of what I did. Oopsies.  I also started being contacted by authors to review their books as well, which added more books to my growing TBR.

Then. Came. BookCon. For those who don’t know, I’m from Chicago and BookCon decided to move it here back in 2016 (for only that year it seems, which makes me really sad). I missed BEA because I didn’t know about it, but the convention itself was so much fun and I came home with so many books, most of which were ARCs. They handed them out to everyone, but it seemed that as soon as I mentioned having a blog, authors were even more excited to have their books promoted. If you can make it to BookCon (which is held in New York), I 100% recommend it. It’s a lot of fun, a great way to discover new books, and you get to meet other bloggers/influencers.

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Expectation: I can just post things and people will read them.

Reality: Unless you’re super lucky and already have a chunk of loyal readers who check your blog regularly, this is not the case. As I said with my first expectation, blogging is a lot of work. I’m an extremely visual person, and I have a background in web design, so I really enjoy visiting blogs that are visually appealing and reading posts that are formatted in an interesting way. It’s fun to read when it’s colorful, random words or phrases are bolded, or pictures/gifs are included. (Fun fact, if you break up your posts with gifs or pictures, it gives the eyes/mind a break and keeps people reading. Something like that?)

BUT not only do I make my posts look pretty (or sure as hell try to), but I have to promote them. How else will people find me??

Posting to twitter is helpful (though certainly not something I’ve mastered yet), but blog hopping is the most efficient (and fun) way to interact and drive traffic to your blog. I read somewhere once, that if you just post things and don’t interact with anyone, no one will have a reason to read your blog. Don’t you want people to read the posts that you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into? I do! (But I also want to see what other people are writing and have to say.)

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Expectation: Other bloggers won’t want to interact with me.

Reality: They will because they love it!! I know that getting a ping on my phone from WordPress makes me so happy, especially when it’s someone commenting on a post. I’m here to gush about books with other bookish fiends, so actually getting to do that and have a conversation is awesome! Plus, who knows, you may even start to build some friendships with other bloggers you interact with regularly (oooh did that sound creepy?). 😉

I seriously can’t stress interaction enough. Blog hop, comment, follow, gush, discuss, we like to do it all! Hell, pick a tag someone’s done, link back to their post, and tag people! If they’ve already done it, that’s ok. You’re connecting with people! Book bloggers are seriously one of the most welcoming communities, you will not be shunned, I promise.

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Expectation: Reviews are the most popular posts to write.

Reality: As sad as it is, this is not the case. I’d say weekly memes and discussion posts are the most popular because they create more of a conversation. For me personally, I tend to skip reviews if a) I’m not interested in the book, or b) I haven’t read it. The second part is what gets me; isn’t the point of a review to see if you want to read the book? I guess I like reading reviews of books I’ve already read because I feel like I can actually contribute to the conversation.

Then there’s also the whole question of whether or not I can trust this person’s opinion. When I typically visit someone’s blog for the first time, it’s because a different post drew me in and then I eventually read their reviews. We’ve gotta build a repoire first and make sure I can trust them, you know? There are tons of reasons why reviews aren’t popular and I’ve read a few interesting posts about this topic: check them out here, here, and here.

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Now that I’ve burst your bubble, did or do you share any of these expectations? What other realities of blogging have you found that I didn’t mention? Let’s chat!

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